Author: TechBrunch
Not all of FTX's former top executives will go to prison. Former FTX Chief Technology Officer Gary Wang was spared prison time today by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan. Judge Kaplan praised Mr. Wang's cooperation with federal authorities. Wang testified against former FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman Fried in a trial last fall. Mr. Wang pleaded guilty to four felony counts of fraud and conspiracy. Former FTX CEO Bankman Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison last year and appealed in September. Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of FTX's Alameda Research, was sentenced to two years in prison…
The U.S. government has announced charges against five people accused of carrying out a multi-year hacking campaign (dubbed “0ktapus'' by security researchers) that targeted tech giants and crypto holders. On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a press release announcing charges against five suspected hackers. Ahmed Hossam Eldin Elbadawi, 23, of College Station, Texas, Ahmed Hossam Eldin Elbadawi, 23, of College Station, Texas. Noah Michael Urban, 20, of Palm Coast, Florida. Evans Onyeaka Osigbo, 20, of Dallas, Texas. Joel Martin Evans, 25, of Jacksonville, North Carolina. and Tyler Robert Buchanan, 22, from the UK, who was arrested in Spain…
May Mobility is gradually evolving its driverless capabilities. The company began a small rollout of self-driving shuttles this week. Self-driving shuttles automatically travel along a predetermined route without the need for a human safety driver to be present. May will initially deploy one or two self-driving Toyota Sienna minivans to transport employees and “guests” to a two-square-mile area of the city. This is the second city in May's so-called “driver out” operation. In December 2023, the startup began driverless testing in a planned community in Sun City, Arizona, where it is currently transporting passengers for free. May Mobility co-founder and…
Living in isolation and sharing a home office with her mother, a renowned radiologist, has given Shiva Suri a unique perspective on how radiologists work. “I watched her work every day and she was wasting about seven to eight hours on boring workflow tasks,” Suri said. “Only 5% of the time was she limited in her radiology thinking skills, which was really sad.” So Suri, then an engineer at big data analytics company Confluent, founded New Lantern, a startup that automates tedious radiology-related tasks such as 3D measurements during scans and report generation. Suri (pictured below center) noticed that her…
Defense technology funding reaches new high. Defense technology startups have raised nearly $3 billion through 2024, according to Crunchbase. This surpassed the previous record of $2.6 billion in 2022. This is an impressive feat, especially considering the declining number of transactions. There were 113 defense technology rounds in 2022, more than 85 rounds in 2024. The record is held by weapons maker Anduril, which raised $1.5 billion in Series F funding in August, and Saronic Technologies, an autonomous marine vehicle company founded by Anduril alumni who raised $175 million in Series B funding this year. , is gaining momentum with…
Meta is introducing new features to its messaging app, Messenger, including AI-powered noise suppression. Messenger offers HD video calling and audio separation, both of which can be enabled from the call settings menu. According to Meta, HD calling is now the default for calls over Wi-Fi and an option for calls over mobile. Image credit: Meta Messenger also now allows you to leave audio or video voice messages, similar to digital voicemail, when a contact is unavailable. If the other party doesn't answer the phone, try a new call.[メッセージを録音]You can send audio or video recordings with the tap of a…
Hello everyone, welcome to TechCrunch's regular AI newsletter. If you'd like to have this sent to your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. The AI war between the US and China is escalating, or at least the rhetoric surrounding it is escalating. On Tuesday, a U.S. Congressional committee proposed a “Manhattan Project-style” effort to fund the development of AI systems with human-level or superhuman intelligence. In its annual report, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) found that policymakers approved funding for “major AI, cloud, and data center companies” and that AI development is a “national priority.” It recommended…
H, a Parisian startup founded by Google alumni, made a splash last summer when it suddenly announced a $220 million seed round before releasing a single product. Three months later, there was still no product, but the splash was a devastating flood as three of the company's five co-founders left leaving behind “operational and business differences.” It started to look like. But the company kept swimming and today announced its first product, the Runner H. This is an “agent” AI aimed at businesses and developers across tasks such as quality assurance and process automation. It is built on top of…
As X competitor Bluesky hits 20 million users and takes off, Meta's own Twitter-like app, Instagram Threads, begins rolling out a new feature called Custom Feeds to its global audience. Ta. Custom Feeds is intended to allow Threads users to easily create feeds around specific topics or topics that include specific user profiles, in hopes of capitalizing on user demand for more personalization. I'm here. This gives Threads users easy access to the communities and conversations that matter most to them, and leverages Bluesky's unique set of personalization tools, including tools that allow users to build their own algorithms, feeds,…
The FBI yesterday announced that Joanna Smith-Griffin, the founder of AI startup AllHere Education, was involved in “securities fraud, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft related to defrauding investors” for nearly $10 million. An indictment was released alleging deception. The FBI alleges that she misrepresented the company's revenue, customer base and cash to investors from at least November 2020 to June 2024. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the company is in Chapter 7 bankruptcy. If convicted, Smith-Griffin faces up to 20 years in prison for securities fraud, up to 20 years for wire fraud, and up to two years…